Same story with northeast Ohio Gamestops. I will probably just get it at Best Buy or Micro Center tomorrow or Friday. The bright side is now everytime random Gamestop employee asks me to "preorder a game to make sure I get it," I'll just smile and say "You mean like Gears of War" and walk away.

Well, I was able to pick up my pre-order from Gamestop today and that's here in Baltimore, but my buddy who works in Silver Springs couldn't get his cause his orders was stuck in Tenn. Anyway, he is on the way to Best Buy to get it since they have it in stock

Btw, Arkon is a evil man. We are playing SP Coop and we decide to take a break. While playing I get a voice message from papasmurf saying, "Damn! Hard-core! We might play MP later you up for some?" Seems that Arkon set our very first play thru on the hardcore difficulty. No wonder I was getting my ass kicked.

The game is awesome and it will take some time for me to get used to the cover and shot playstyle. All other shooters haven't prepared me for this, but that's a good thing

I love how this thread has been reduced to two pages of people's impressions of acquiring the game itself rather than playing it.

Your right. My initial immpression after 30-45 minute of playing.

I won't mention the graphic much, but I play on a HDTV and they look awesome, but Arkon who I was playing SP Coop with was playing on the standard def tv and he was ohh and ahh over the visuals

Gameplay so far is a nice change of pace. This isn't Halo or even GRAW. Shoot and sccot is very important. If you charge a enemy you will be killed. The AI so far seems able to flank and react to us flanking. I haven't seen too many brain dead AI yet.

I haven't tried MP yet other than SP coop, but I hope to get to it tonite.

So if I cancel my preorder with GameStop is there a way to get my $5 returned or applied to a used game or something? I can't think of anything else I want bad enough to preorder. It just figures that the only goddamn time I actually give in and preorder something it gets fucked up in the process.

So if I cancel my preorder with GameStop is there a way to get my $5 returned or applied to a used game or something? I can't think of anything else I want bad enough to preorder. It just figures that the only goddamn time I actually give in and preorder something it gets fucked up in the process.

Got in about an hour or so of multiplayer with papa smurf, jarrodhk, et al, and we got in some 3v3.

Maps are definitely varied. One was a mostly-indoor shootout featuring a large two-story lobby. One was mostly open ground with shipping containers. One featured one team at the top of a three level courtyard, and the other team at the bottom, but with grenades and sniper rifles.

Matches were mostly fast and furious. Flanking was performed, shots were traded, and most of the time everyone was dead before things started to drag. It slowed down once or twice when it was down to one person per team and neither could get a bead on the other.

The sniper rifle can be super deadly in the hands of the right person, perhaps too much. There's just a lot of cover for a good sniper to hide behind, and with teams as small as they are, he can easily take down half your team before you even get a good look at him. The chainsaw is neat, and as I said in game, I don't think that there's any weapon that couldn't be improved by including a chainsaw, and that includes orbital laser assemblies.

So yeah, thumbs up from me, and I'm looking forward to playing some more so I can stop sucking so much.

Only having played the multiplayer, my initial fears of a mindless shooter with super pretty graphics have been squashed. Calvin and I randomly found pub's, joined up, employed tactics, and it was great, great fun. It is so satisfying to just slam into a wall for cover. The game is fun, and I hope that new shininess doesn't wear off after a short while like most next-gen games have sort of offered...

Took some getting used to the controls, especially how all the special moves work with cover. The roadie run actually automatically puts you into any cover you touch, which is good and bad at times. You can go directly into the roadie run after using a special move by simply holding down the A button instead of just

I wouldn't suggest anyone start the game on hardcore without another human player. The teammate AI that is decent enough for casual is simply too brainless to work in hardcore mode. In hardcore, it takes forever just to kill one locust, and you and your teammates take extra damage. Unfortunately, teammate AI isn't updated to take this into account so your teammates still rush forward into fire when they should just stay put and let you flank. Your AI teammates just become nuisances that you have to run around reviving and not getting anything done. Instead, play hardcore with a teammate where two human players can really go at it.

One thing this game is crying out for is 4 player co-op. So far I've never had less than 3 teammates with my character, and I'm wondering about the main reasons why they didn't include it. Heck, the story seems to fit 4 player co-op in well. I think it may be more technical constraints such as framerate instead of story problems. I know GRAW's 4 player split screen co-op has FPS issues.

For those having problems with certain guns, try playing execution mode. This mode requires that to actually take someone out of the round, you have to get up close to him and do an execution move, otherwise they automatically revive after a short time. This means even if you snipe someone, a teammate has to be there to put him down permanently. The Assassin mode only allows the big guns, like the sniper rifle, to be used by each team's commanders too.

I picked up my copy at Fry's for $10 off.

Overall, I'm enjoying the game. It's actually a pretty simple game, nothing too new, just presented well and that's fine by me. The emphasis on cover and flanking are refreshing for a more action oriented game.

There are annoyances with the game, though.

The wounded meter I think is a little too small and too easily confused as the teammate wounded icon. Instead, they should have used something closer to CoD2 where the edges of the screen get more blurry and red as you take more damage and need to rest.

AI can be both great and frustrating. They really should have taken a cue from FEAR more and had AI know when to simply park themselves in cover and provide cover fire in the more heated engagements, especially in hardcore difficulty. FEAR really struck a good balance between units staying in cover and others moving in to flank at the right time. Not that I don't like it when teammates go forth and get kills on their own, but early on there are a lot of sequences involving locust turrets where my entire team gets killed leaving me to revivie them in the middle of battle, when honestly, those guys should have advanced a lot more cautiously with the turrets around and waited for me to flank.

There's also a problem where some enemies become supermen, run forward into the fire of all four of my teammates and melees me twice and kills me. I shoot them all I want but the guy keeps coming forward.

Does anyone know exactly how voice comm works in warzone games? I was expecting it to be Rainbow 6 style where you can only talk to your teammate until you got killed, at which point you can only talk to other dead people, but it seems like it's just everyone talking to everyone all the time. If that is the case, it makes tactics a bit more difficult.

edit: Never mind. I RTFMd, and turns out it is like R6. I must have been hearing things last night.

I wasn't into the game much at first (almost put it down after an hour) but, after getting a bit into into Act 2, the game is finally starting to click with me. Still doesn't feel like a 9.5 or 10, but that could certainly change since I have a lot of game left.

I'm very impressed by the level design. While I'm already getting a bit tired of walking into a room and seeing a whole bunch of barricades seemingly placed by the hand of God to provide perfect cover for the soldiers, there has been enough neat wrinkles here and there to make up for that.

I would have loved the Beserker section as a change of pace if it hadn't been for Dom's braindead AI that had him dying within two seconds of the creature's appearance most of the time, necessitating repeated reloads that weren't my fault.

Graphics are simultaneously impressive and not impressive. Before you guys lynch me- what I mean is that I feel like I've seen so much media on this game that I already felt like I knew what everything was going to look like so I haven't really felt like I needed to pick up my jaw off the floor. That said, I think they took just about all of that media from the first act so as not to spoil later parts of the game, so I expect I'll be more impressed by the sights from here on out. What I *am* impressed with though is the rock solid framerate. I've been very, very frustrated with framerate issues on 360 games that just didn't look that good to begin with, so I had been a bit worried that Gears might be a jerky mess but thankfully that isn't the case at all.

Looks like I'm going to have to play this exclusively until I beat it though. I didn't see any options for inverting the X-Axis, and after getting used FFXII's inverted X-Axis, Gears was giving me fits at the beginning until I got used to "normal" again. So no way will I be able to play both games at the same time. Since GoW is supposedly pretty short, hopefully I'll beat it on Saturday and then I can get back to FFXII.

It's well presented. The opening cut-scene is short, sets up the character, and jumps right into the action. You get an option to fight or train almost immediately. I recommend the training. It's not very long, but it will give you a chance to become semi-comfortable with the controls before hitting the thick of things.

You absolutely want to have a basic feel for the controls. As mentioned elsewhere, the 'A' button does so much, and is so context sensitive, that it'll take some time to get the nuances. I wish they would have broken up some of the actions away from the 'A' button so you could have a bit more precision. I'm also kinda bummed that the stick speed only has basic low/med/high settings rather than sliders for the individual axies. The controls are not terrible, but they could have been better.

Gameplay? Frantic and visceral! Do not mess up by sticking your dome out from cover very often. It's not Tokyo, and you're not Godzilla. You will get a beat down if you think you're going to stand up and fight in the open. Cover is so crucial in GoW, moreso than anything else I've seen. Often games seem to give the enemy AI piss poor aiming, not here...they are as a good a shot as you, if not better. They will take cover, they will flank, they may not be as unpredictable or as self-preserving as a human opponent would be, yet they are using tactics. Your teamamtes are on par with the baddies. I expected them to be a worse than they are because of some complaints on other forums...but they'll do.

I can't comment on squad tactics yet, but hopefully I'll get to those tonight.

I think sounds could have been beefier, but they are good none the less. Voice acting is a bit campy, but it suits the game.

Graphically it's fantastic, as we all seem to know. Some things seem a bit out of place due to half-ass textures...but they are far and few between. The rub is that you can't quite appreciate the look when playing as much as you can while sitting back watching it. There is just so much happening during a firefight that you don't notice the little details as much.

Personally, I think the review scores are a bit high, yet I'd still recommend it to anyone with a XB360. It's a gibbing fun time.

Anyone have any recommendations on weapons? I inadvertently switched out my chainsaw gun for a crappy SMG pretty early and it felt like forever until I found another chainsaw gun so I've been loathe to try any other weapons since then.

Anyone have any recommendations on weapons? I inadvertently switched out my chainsaw gun for a crappy SMG pretty early and it felt like forever until I found another chainsaw gun so I've been loathe to try any other weapons since then.

I'm trying to decide what weapon to use if I walk into Gamestop on my lunch our and they tell me they still don't have in in stock.

This game rocks, but I will say that I am seeing a great deal of commonality with respect to games like this and GRAW and Rainbow Six Vegas.I am not saying they are exact, but they play much like each other.

That being said, GoW is adding more realism to the mix. If you stick your head out of cover for more than snap shooting, your dead pretty darn quick.

I've only played for a few hours, but so far this game meets all the hype IMHO.

If we get to the point where we find the sniper rifle is making the game a bit unfair, can the host set a game up without that particular gun?

I had read somewhere they were thinking of implementing this option, but I don't know if it made it in to the final game. I'm just curious if the option exists.

At the begining when the host sets up the game there is an option to swap weapons and in that option the host can take out the sniper. I think it is balanced. The only way to kill someone is a headshot. If you miss the reload is a bitch to get in time to hit take another shot at it. It definitely is extremely difficult (I don't think I have) to kill someone non-head shot with it.... Not to mention....there are 2 snipers per level on most of the maps.

If we get to the point where we find the sniper rifle is making the game a bit unfair, can the host set a game up without that particular gun?

I had read somewhere they were thinking of implementing this option, but I don't know if it made it in to the final game. I'm just curious if the option exists.

At the begining when the host sets up the game there is an option to swap weapons and in that option the host can take out the sniper. I think it is balanced. The only way to kill someone is a headshot. If you miss the reload is a bitch to get in time to hit take another shot at it. It definitely is extremely difficult (I don't think I have) to kill someone non-head shot with it.... Not to mention....there are 2 snipers per level on most of the maps.

Of course you think it's balanced, you were the one taking off heads with it left and right!

I think it will balance out better once we learn the maps and know where the likely sniper nests are and what routes to use to flank them.

Is anybody else running this on a VGA adapter on a 4:3 monitor? I'm having the same problem as a couple other games (Lego Star Wars 2, PGR3) in that if I go above 640x480 in normal resolutions it gives me double widescreen bars so the visuals are squished into the middle third of the screen. It's as if the system tells it to limit the display to the widescreen area and then the game itself is putting in another set of black bars and limiting itself within that smaller area. If I try running in a widescreen resolution it stretches the whole thing to fit the monitor with no black bars (as I would expect). Stupid system, just work!

If we get to the point where we find the sniper rifle is making the game a bit unfair, can the host set a game up without that particular gun?

I had read somewhere they were thinking of implementing this option, but I don't know if it made it in to the final game. I'm just curious if the option exists.

At the begining when the host sets up the game there is an option to swap weapons and in that option the host can take out the sniper. I think it is balanced. The only way to kill someone is a headshot. If you miss the reload is a bitch to get in time to hit take another shot at it. It definitely is extremely difficult (I don't think I have) to kill someone non-head shot with it.... Not to mention....there are 2 snipers per level on most of the maps.

Of course you think it's balanced, you were the one taking off heads with it left and right!

I think it will balance out better once we learn the maps and know where the likely sniper nests are and what routes to use to flank them.

Heh, it's always funny when someone's in the middle of talking to you when they get nailed in the head. 'Hey, what kind of weapon is'<crack!>...... What you really need to do is learn to get the head shots from the hip (i.e. without zooming in). I got at least one doing that the other day. GAH! having no working 360 and talking about the game is driving me crazy. I have the feeling the Core system is in my future...

Logged

Because I can,also because I don't care what you want.XBL: OriginalCeeKayWii U: CeeKay

Is anybody else running this on a VGA adapter on a 4:3 monitor? I'm having the same problem as a couple other games (Lego Star Wars 2, PGR3) in that if I go above 640x480 in normal resolutions it gives me double widescreen bars so the visuals are squished into the middle third of the screen. It's as if the system tells it to limit the display to the widescreen area and then the game itself is putting in another set of black bars and limiting itself within that smaller area. If I try running in a widescreen resolution it stretches the whole thing to fit the monitor with no black bars (as I would expect). Stupid system, just work!

Pretty sure I saw a comment from Epic's Mark Rein talking about the aspect ratio in the game being bugged under certain conditions.

I have to admit - 3 hours in and I'm feeling a little underwhelmed. It's easily the best looking game out there, and the sound is fantastic but the gameplay and bugs are tarnishing the experience for me a bit. The combat is good, but getting repetitive and the levels are extremely linear. The bezerker battle was a nice change of pace and left me wishing for more variations like it.

The bugs are what's killing me though - I've run into a ton of instances in levels now where the AI/level trigger gets 'stuck' and I have to restart. The worst offender was the part where:

Spoiler for Hiden:

you were defending the robot from the little gollum looking dudes while he opened the door. Twice I cleared out the enemies only to have the robot get stuck and the door not open. Another two times all visible enemies would be cleared, but the squad would be shooting at an invisible enemy on the ceiling (also preventing the door trigger from happening). Finally on the 5th try the door opened when it was supposed to.

I've had two crashes as well.... me thinks the game wasn't quite all the way cooked.

I didn't get a chance to try multiplayer, so hopefully that will restore some of the shine for me.

I have to admit - 3 hours in and I'm feeling a little underwhelmed. It's easily the best looking game out there, and the sound is fantastic but the gameplay and bugs are tarnishing the experience for me a bit. The combat is good, but getting repetitive and the levels are extremely linear. The bezerker battle was a nice change of pace and left me wishing for more variations like it.

The bugs are what's killing me though - I've run into a ton of instances in levels now where the AI/level trigger gets 'stuck' and I have to restart. The worst offender was the part where:

Spoiler for Hiden:

you were defending the robot from the little gollum looking dudes while he opened the door. Twice I cleared out the enemies only to have the robot get stuck and the door not open. Another two times all visible enemies would be cleared, but the squad would be shooting at an invisible enemy on the ceiling (also preventing the door trigger from happening). Finally on the 5th try the door opened when it was supposed to.

I've had two crashes as well.... me thinks the game wasn't quite all the way cooked.

I didn't get a chance to try multiplayer, so hopefully that will restore some of the shine for me.

When I played through the game with Jarrod I didn't ever have any problems with the game and we ran it for 7hrs- all the way through. Hopefully this is only isolated.

If we get to the point where we find the sniper rifle is making the game a bit unfair, can the host set a game up without that particular gun?

I had read somewhere they were thinking of implementing this option, but I don't know if it made it in to the final game. I'm just curious if the option exists.

At the begining when the host sets up the game there is an option to swap weapons and in that option the host can take out the sniper. I think it is balanced. The only way to kill someone is a headshot. If you miss the reload is a bitch to get in time to hit take another shot at it. It definitely is extremely difficult (I don't think I have) to kill someone non-head shot with it.... Not to mention....there are 2 snipers per level on most of the maps.

Of course you think it's balanced, you were the one taking off heads with it left and right!

I think it will balance out better once we learn the maps and know where the likely sniper nests are and what routes to use to flank them.

Yeah I know I was being a dick and for that I am sorry.......but when your team's tactic is to target me first...well I gotta survive.....

You are right, once people know the maps it will be harder to snipe. There is nothing like using decoys though. You might be shooting at someone else just so a sniper can line up the head shot.......

Hey, no hard feelings. If you can pop heads with the sniper rifle, you pop heads with the sniper rifle. Back in the Unreal Tournament days, I was a monster with the flak cannon, and I had no problem using it, frequently and with prejudice. All's fair in love and war. Keep on shooting, and eventually we'll figure out how to keep our heads out of your line of fire.

Hey, no hard feelings. If you can pop heads with the sniper rifle, you pop heads with the sniper rifle. Back in the Unreal Tournament days, I was a monster with the flak cannon, and I had no problem using it, frequently and with prejudice. All's fair in love and war. Keep on shooting, and eventually we'll figure out how to keep our heads out of your line of fire.

Lol I know it is part of the game but you never want to be that jerk that sucks the fun out of the game..... But I will keep on firing!